Morning Reading: Is Tim Tebow Truly One of the Greatest Ever?

Another

Andy Staples from SI.com (I know, again) has attempted to answer the question that’s being asked all over the place. Is Tim Tebow truly one of the greatest college football players of all-time? First of all, let me just say I believe it’s impossible to answer this question and the reason is simple. Stating who is or who isn’t the greatest player ever is subjective. There is no world-wide vote to determine who it should be. There is no specific thing Tebow can accomplish to make him the greatest ever. It’s something each person has their own opinion about. I even have my own at the moment.

To me, he is. But I’ll add this caveat. Tim Tebow is the greatest player I’ve ever seen play the game. I’ve watched some good ones in my years as a fan. Charlie Ward (yes, I would mention him). LaVar Arrington (due to his subpar NFL career, I think many forget just how dominant he was at Penn State). Orlando Pace. Reggie Bush. Vince Young. Tommie Frazier. Now I spent exactly 10 seconds thinking of those names so don’t think it as a definitive list. And, of course, remember these are just players I watched. I can’t speak too much about those like Red Grange or Herschel Walker.

Because there are so many factors that have to be taken into account when trying to determine who is the greatest ever, Staples decided to narrow the field. It’s very hard to compare eras and nearly impossible to compare positions. So Staples looked at Tebow against other quarterbacks from the last 25 years. I won’t get too deep into it (you can read the article yourself), but he devised a formula basically looking at winning percentage and statistics. Staples then put Tebow up against some of the recent greats as well as his two current adversaries – Sam Bradford and Colt McCoy. Tebow’s current score came up lower than only four people – Young, Matt Leinart, Pat White, and Colt Brennan.

The results are interesting in that, as Staples mentions, you tend to forget how good White really was. He’s the only individual that ends up with over 900 points and he absolutely shattered that mark at 983.38. Young should definitely be in the discussion. But the other two, eh. Leinart was good – very good – but so was practically every single member of the USC teams he played for. And Brennan? Give me a break. Inflated statistics due to being a SYSTEM quarterback push him into the discussion. But we can immediately remove him from it.

Now of course, this is just one man’s way of looking at it. But it’s interesting none-the-less. I’m confident in saying that I believe Tebow is one of the greatest ever and definitely the best quarterback of the last 25 years. Although, even I would have Young a very close second. And after looking at Staples’ break down, White jumped up a bunch of spots on my list. (H/T: One-Eyed Willy)